


Ask Me No Questions

by entanglednow



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-02-04
Updated: 2008-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-31 08:11:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Sylar and not Elle, who tracks Peter down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask Me No Questions

Peter still remembers the first time. When he'd thought he was fighting for his life and he'd used everything he had. Every strange gift, every inhuman resource his body could throw out. Only to be flung into a wall and choked with hands made of ice.

A split second realisation that Sylar was like him, just like him.

Angry and brittle and hard with something dark and frustrated, but just the same. All ice and fire, and push without hands. It was stunning and terrifying and amazing, though that amazement had nearly cost Peter his life. Because Sylar not only seemed to have everything he had, he was better, he was faster. He owned his power in ways that made Peter's destructive madness seem dangerously reckless. He focused his power, made it beautiful and lethal. And he would have killed him but for one detail.

Electricity...Sylar hadn't had that curiosity.

He hadn't expected Peter to have it either. Hadn't expected him to lash out with it on instinct. Which was why he ended up a smoking tumble of coat and limbs while Peter was still learning how to breathe. He'd dragged him back across the floor. Pinned him there in a fury and demanded answers to his questions.

To tell him who he was, to tell him why, to tell him how. To tell him everything, anything. But Sylar had laughed through bloodied teeth. He'd laughed and told Peter that he was broken. Peter hadn't known how to drag answers from him then. He hadn't known what Sylar wanted.

He does now

***

Stretched out on the floor Sylar is pale and endless, arms flung up over his head, and bound together by his own belt. Peter's far too attached to touching it, to dragging his fingers over that tangle of black, every time Sylar breathes through his teeth. Every time he groans under the sway and push of Peter's hips. The leather has bitten through the skin, smears and trails of red decorate Sylar's wrists, and the long, tight line of black. He's no longer pulling though, his arms are relaxed. Peter's breathing against the edge of his ear, one hand still clenched deep in Sylar's hair, the other pressed flat into the floor, holding his weight.

One thigh shifts, restless and uncomfortable against the damp skin at Peter's waist. But Sylar's throat is so very warm under Peter's mouth, warm and painted with fading red marks, that are the ghostly impressions of his own teeth. He doesn't want to leave, he doesn't want to stop. But it's only a matter of time before Sylar's hands take the decision from him.

They're already shifting on the floor. Peter catches them and holds them still, just because he can.

Sylar makes a quiet, unhappy noise when he slides free. Peter is briefly tempted to push. Sylar may be more dangerous when he's angry, but he's also far more likely to tell Peter things he wants to know. Instead he picks at the belt with slender fingers, dragging the tacky leather out of its stranglehold. Sylar says nothing, he simply stares, quiet and still at the dusty ceiling, while Peter frees his hands. His wrists twitch under Peter's fingertips, flickers of movement that aren't just pain. He wants to be touched, but he doesn't. Sylar is constantly at war with himself. A quiet, internal fury that Peter is no part of.

Though he thinks, perhaps, he would like to be.

His hands slide down Sylar's arms, all the way down to his chest, before sliding up again to his neck. His fingertips leave red marks on Sylar's throat, on his jaw, he turns his head, makes him look at him.

"Are you going to let me kiss you today?" He doesn't wait for an answer, kisses him anyway, kisses the red line of his mouth. Then he smoothes his hands over bruises left by his own fingers, bruises that will have faded to beige by tomorrow. Sylar doesn't heal like him either. Sylar breaks hard, and the blood stays. Stays wherever Peter paints it, and he can taste it on his teeth, can feel it on the hot skin of his back, and the wince he gets is more of a snarl. "Is Sylar even your real name?"

"No," Sylar says roughly. There's a pause, long and considering, and then Sylar shakes him off. Peter lets him, lets him sway upright on a groan of pain and tempered fury. But the expression on his face is more complicated than that. Peter drags his thumb through the smear of blood on Sylar's lower lip, it's dried tacky, the split under it warm and unnaturally soft.

"Let me -"

"No," Sylar protests. Peter frowns, his expression from the side is lost. Sylar's knee pushes Peter out of the way, and he drags himself to his feet. He picks his jeans up off of the floor, and slides back into them. He doesn't look back at where Peter is lounged on the floor, hands flung over his knees.

"What's your real name?" Peter asks, and watches Sylar spine tighten in long lines.

"Your questions aren't supposed to be about me," Sylar says tightly, while he drags the buttons shut.

"They're my questions," Peter says simply. Which is the truth. "What's your real name?"

Sylar's jaw clenches, relaxes. "Gabriel."

It doesn't suit him. Sylar has too many edges, too many corners. Peter thinks there are too many deep, dark places for Gabriel to ever seem right.

"Did I know you when you were Gabriel?"

"No." It's quick, tight, and maybe just a little uneasy.

Peter stands, dips two fingers into the waistband of Sylar's jeans and drags him close enough that he can re-thread the belt through it's loops.

"Then it doesn't matter." Peter leans up, fits his mouth over Sylar's scowling one. Testing if he can push just a little further. After a short, tense pause Sylar catches the back of his neck. He doesn't stop him though, and Peter indulges as long as he lets him.

***

  


On quiet mornings Peter will take the photograph out of his pocket and smooth it flat on the bar. But no matter how many times he stares at it it's just paper and ink. Unfamiliar smiles from an unfamiliar life. Sylar is not the man in the picture. The man in the picture could be anyone. Husband, brother, best friend, boyfriend. The photograph tells him nothing. He has no story to go with the picture, no context. But God, there should be something, just...something. He's carried it folded from God knows where. It should have meaning, it should be obvious. It should evoke something. There shouldn't just be a blank space, nothing, no emotion, no connection. Instead he's just frustrated and confused, smoothing his thumbs over the edges of it over and over and trying to read a million things from his own smile.

But then Sylar doesn't have any context either. He's just a face that tells Peter nothing, but expects to use their history for some sort of absolution just the same. And Peter lets him, he lets him because it's better than standing here staring at a photograph, and feeling like someone has broken all the parts of him that were ever important. Sound and fury is at least something complicated, something real, even if it hurts.

But it's started to hurt more every time Sylar leaves, and that frightens Peter more than anything. He thinks, if he asks, Sylar will tell him who the man is.

But it might be the last question he ever answers.

 

***

The questions eat at him, the one's he can ask and the ones he can't. Just one question, any question and Sylar will answer, he'll have to.

One more push, and Peter can know.

So Peter does the only thing he can.

 

***

  


When Sylar shows himself Peter steps up behind him and drags the coat from his shoulders. He's watched by cautious eyes as he flings it over the edge of the table. There are issues of trust here and, considering the chasm in Peter's head, a vast majority of it stems from every one of his movements. Wherever Sylar learned not to trust he did it the hard way. But Peter's learning that there isn't always a wrong way.

Sylar's taller than him, but Peter is learning how to make that work too. He lifts a hand folds it over Sylar's mouth, and presses it down hard.

"You don't get to talk today."

Sylar's body language is furious, Peter can feel his teeth grinding, can feel every clench of his jaw. There's a shivering threat of teeth.

The moment his lips move Peter runs electricity through his hand. There's a broken shout through his fingers, and Sylar jerks his head to the side, hard. But Peter's holding him fast, fingers secure in their grip. His other hand is sliding into the front of Sylar's jeans, thumb dragging the buttons free of their holes. Sylar tips his head back, breathes in through his nose, and he makes it easy, makes it so easy to take, and Peter just can't stop. He slides a hand under the jeans, and Sylar's skin is impossibly hot underneath, twitching and flexing under Peter's fingers.

It's impossible not to push them down over his hip bones, to drag them past his thighs. One push and Sylar knocks into the table, takes one awkward step and then falls onto a hand. Peter thumps into his back, hand still tight and Sylar's growling underneath it, and the fact that he can do this, that Sylar lets him do this. It's insane, and yet so very addictive.

His own jeans are harder to slide out of, but then there's the question of - he wonders if he'll lose them if he puts his fingers in Sylar's mouth. He's stupidly, recklessly tempted anyway. In the end he settles for his own, and Sylar's head dips forward while he stretches him out in quick, indulgent pushes that make everything close and hot. That make him want desperately, already too hard and too tight in his own skin, and Peter thinks he would never, never be this rough with anyone else.

One press against the middle of his back, and there's a flicker of resistance before the skin shifts, lowers under the pressure.

The push is not hard, and it's not quick, they've played rougher. But there's still a flinch and a quickly choked off noise under Peter's hand when he edges all the way inside. It's a noise Peter wants and hates at the same time. He doesn't think he should be that type of person, but the way Sylar flexes under him, shifts in short fluid movements until everything is quick and easy and utterly wrong.

Peter thinks he could survive like this.

Peter slides his hand off of Sylar's mouth, leaves him breathing desperately hard, balanced on his own elbows, thighs twitching in quick, helpless little spasms under every quick shove, and in-between the gasps are harsh words, and bitten off curses, sprinkled through with groans that make Peter's hands stretch up Sylar's back and across his waist.

Peter always wins, but he's not stupid enough to pretend that it's because he's better, faster, meaner. He knows he's none of those things. Sylar's hands splay on the table, fingers white, wrists tightening with tension and he takes everything, until Peter no longer cares who's won and who's lost.

All he cares about is this, and he doesn't care why Sylar came looking for him, or what he wants, or whether he lies.

He doesn't care at all.

He drags his hands over Sylar's narrow waist, pulls him back, pulls him in tight, makes him growl under his breath, and it's good, better when his hand slides far enough to grasp Sylar's cock, and no matter how rough they are, no matter how much they bleed and choke and hurt each other he'll always be hard. He'll always want it. Now it makes Sylar's head tip forward, makes him breathe a plea into the wood of the table. And Peter stops thinking altogether.

Until he's left folded over Sylar's back, murmuring things which aren't questions at all into the smooth, damp expanse of skin. There's nothing for Sylar to answer, so he doesn't.

When he slides free Sylar calls him something so filthy that he almost laughs. He doesn't because the other man is pale, and scowling, and he doesn't move for a long, unpleasant moment.

"I don't even know if you deserve it," Peter says softly.

"I do." Sylar's voice is quiet but insistent.

 

***

"Where's your friend, the moody one that always look like someone died?" Caitlin asks between grapes. She found a bowl of them, and she's indulging while the bar is empty, holding them in the crook of her arm, one leg folded up underneath her on the stool.

"I don't know," Peter says honestly.

"There's mysterious, and there's downright fucking scary you know...and he's not the first."

"He's complicated."

"With all due respect Peter you don't have a clue what he is," Caitlin says carefully.

"I don't have a clue what I am either," Peter says fiercely, which makes Caitlin shake her head.

"Having -" she pauses, as if she can't quite believe what she's about to say. "Having superpowers isn't exactly the best thing to base a relationship on you know."

"It's not a relationship," Peter protests.

"Uh huh," Caitlin offers dubiously. "You fight, and you have sex, trust me, Peter, that's a relationship."

He scowls at her, but all she does is shrug, the corner of her mouth tells him she's made her decision, and all the protesting in the world isn't going to shift it.

 

***

Sylar's a dark shape at the door when everyone else is gone. A tower of intent and restlessness. He always looks restrained, too narrow from odd angles and defensive behind everything else. Peter thinks his coat should be smoking, should be doing something dramatic. Ricky is out, indulging in something questionable. Peter knows this because the quick, disapproving look Caitlin threw him was enough to give it away, and Caitlin herself hasn't come grumbling down the stairs for hours.

When Peter steps close enough to turn out the lights he can feel the cold rolling off of Sylar's coat. But his mouth is warm, and it gives under Peter's in a way that's become the only thing that's familiar in a world full of questions and mirror images. He has so little basis for comparison that his brain seems to have taken every sensation, every push, every detail, every shudder of Sylar's breath against his skin, and decided to turn it into sense memory, to make it his own.

It makes him feel like he owns him, like he knows him.

But Peter already knows that memories can lie.

He takes a step, pushes until Sylar thumps into the door of the bar. They're close but there's no adrenaline, no fury. This isn't what they do, this isn't right - Peter kisses him again, both hands holding him there, fingers dragging through his hair, tilting his head down so he can push inside. He doesn't pull away for a long moment, not until the line of Sylar's mouth is wet, and his eyes are bright and hot.

"I don't want to fight," Peter says simply. "Can we do that, can we not fight?"

"We're always fighting, it's what we do," Sylar offers, which is a little too vague for Peter's liking.

He kisses him again, dares to stay longer than Sylar usually lets him. Dares to share some of his warmth. Sylar pulls him mouth away between kisses, frowns at him.

"Who are you?" Peter asks, and the words are easy. Much easier than he'd thought they'd be. But he's fully prepared for the answer to be hard.

"I'm not your friend," Sylar says simply, and it's quiet, but sharp. Peter frowns, frowns hard but leaves it alone. Sylar's cold when Peter slides his hands under the coat, cold enough to have been outside for hours. Peter wants to ask what he's been doing, wants to ask why coming to him is apparently so hard. Most of all though Peter just wants to know.

"Who are you?" Sylar asks in exchange, and Peter scowls, opens his mouth to protest. But Sylar kisses him first and Peter doesn't think any answer he could have given matters much. Sylar doesn't protest when Peter catches the edge of his shirt, and tugs him across the bar and upstairs.

The bed protests both their weight, protests the shove of sheets and pillows onto the floor because Sylar's legs are always too long and Peter is too narrow and too tempting and too...breakable. They pretend they don't know each other's weaknesses.

Peter pushes Sylar against the headboard and slides into his lap, hands dragging himself as close as he can get, until they're just a push of skin and breath.

Peter moves the next time they shift apart.

Sylar holds his waist while he reaches, drags the entire contents of the bedside drawer onto the bed rather than search it. Sylar is the one who searches through the debris, then drags him up and opens him with slick fingers, while Peter breathes against his temple in hot, shaky bursts.

He has no idea whether he's done this before or not, and it makes his fingers catch hard in Sylar's hair, makes him groan through his teeth with every long push. He shifts impatiently, because he's the one who doesn't break, he's the one with skin that remembers. He pushes at Sylar's hands and he gets a growl for his impatience but they fall away, let him slide back, let him slide down.

This way is easy too, hands flat on the wall, face buried in the darkness of Sylar's hair, moving in quick, fluid shifts that make it hard to breathe, that make Sylar's hands spread and dig into his back. The deep, broken noises that Sylar makes are soft and familiar, and Peter tips his head back until he can watch them, until he can see what they do to him. The way they leave his mouth open and desperate. and his eyes bright and stunned. He can't resist pushing down with his hips until the sounds break into pieces.

This time Peter doesn't look away.

And there are no questions at all.

Afterwards he lays with his face in Sylar's throat, and says nothing at all while the world slides into night. Sylar twitches, restless, but doesn't move away. There are words in his restlessness, not answers, questions of his own maybe. The possibility is enough for Peter to roll away, to leave him space to speak.

He deserves his own questions.

"What do you do when there's no one to tell you no, no one to say 'stop.'" Sylar's voice is a grate of sound, there's something sharp underneath, something balanced right on the edge. Peter thinks this is a question he needs an answer to, needs an answer to badly.

He stares at the ceiling, stares into the darkness. What did you do when you could have everything you wanted, what did you do when your powers turned morals and ethics and the whole world into shades of grey.

"I don't know," he said honestly. "Remember that you're human, remember that's there's billions of other people on the planet trying to survive too."

The shift next to him is almost too quiet to hear.

"Do you need someone to tell you to stop?" Peter turns his head to the side -

The bed is empty.

 

 

***

The bar is full for six nights in a row, barely enough room to breathe through smoke and alcohol, fake cheer and frustrated apathy.

Sylar doesn't come, and Peter stands looking out into the back streets for far too long. Frustrated and angry in ways which he refuses to look at too closely. The air is too cold, and he can see his breath rising every time he exhales. Waiting is like ants crawling over skin that doesn't fit.

Peter's alone and though he protests as much when asked by a worried Caitlin, he's not alright.

He doesn't want to be alone.

He doesn't want peace.

 

***

  


The clock says twenty six minutes past two the next time he sees Sylar.

Morning not afternoon.

It's been sixteen days.

He's just a dark shadow against the wall by Peter's bed, expression grim but fading to lost.

"I didn't know if you were coming back." Peter's voice is amazingly calm.

Sylar shifts and the ragged sweep of his coat against the wall is strange in the silence.

"I always come back." There's something under the words that Peter chooses to ignore.

"You could at least have woke me up. I'm slightly more interesting that way." Peter shifts on the pillow until he can find his face in the dark, and the longer he looks the more he can see.

"Unless you've come to kill me." Peter's voice is rough with sleep and amusement, but the words drag an expression that's grey and thin onto Sylar's face. It says everything, while saying nothing at all.

Peter takes a long quiet moment to piece together his next question.

"Would you have killed me before, is that what you did?"

Sylar says nothing again and just like that the answer is there in the space between them. Waiting for shock, condemnation, absolution. Peter thinks Sylar would like his memories gone too. A thought occurs to him, slow and insidious, a thought he has to voice.

"Did I deserve it?" Peter shifts up onto an elbow. "Was I - was I someone that deserved it?"

Sylar shakes his head.

"So why haven't you killed me?"

"Evolutionary dead ends," Sylar says at last, and his voice is thin and too quiet.

"I don't understand," Peter tells him, but he's already leaning forward, already catching the thick, cold material of Sylar's coat between his fingers. "Tell me, please." He pulls and Sylar comes against his will, settles on the bed in a creak of springs, and a tight, bitter sound of defeat.

"You were the hero," Sylar says quietly. Like that explains everything, and his face is so desolate. Peter doesn't understand, and Peter is so horribly sick of not understanding.

"Have I punished you enough?" Peter asks, and Sylar flinches like it's exactly the right question. There's something bright and raw underneath it that Peter thinks maybe Sylar wants to show him. "Can we stop punishing each other now?"

Sylar says nothing, he swallows through gritted teeth and refuses to look at him. Peter lays a hand on his waist, he's warm under the shirt, skin twitching under Peter's fingers. He's easy to lean into, tall and deceptively strong, even if he seems to have little clue how to use it. Peter draws his coat over his shoulders, lets it drop to the floor without a word.

His fingers slip under Sylar's shirt and they're much warmer than the skin beneath, warmer still when they slide it up his chest, and drag it over his head.

"I didn't come for that," Sylar protests, though he doesn't pull out of Peter's hands.

"Stay for it anyway." Peter slides out of the sheets, wraps himself around the long line of Sylar's back, hand pushing into his hair, using it as an anchor to drag himself in tight. "Stay."

Sylar doesn't have to be encouraged to kiss him this time, he's the one who turns, finds him in the dark and kisses him until Peter's mouth hurts. Until it's wet and stinging and he can't breathe.

Peter pulls his mouth free, drags it all the way up the rough line of Sylar's cheek.

"Just stay."

Sylar swallows and tips his head back.

"I don't want you to remember." The words are quiet, broken and brutally honest.

"I know," Peter says simply.


End file.
